Using tensorflow to design assistive technologies for people with visual impairments

TensorFlow is an open source deep learning framework developed at Google that enables developers to conceive a wide variety of applications based on artificial intelligence principles. In this paper, we employ such software resources towards the development of a computer vision system for people with visual impairments. We propose a wearable assistive technology solution consisting of a single board computer connected to a camera mounted on the user's glasses. A TensorFlow based software runs on the board in order to real time classify the images captured by the camera, while a text to speech process vocalizes the still's content for the blind person. In this way, the system provides an audio description of the objects in the user's surrounding environment and it may help these people to better detect the things around them.